Like good chefs, brewers will often use the ingredients they’ve got on hand, rather than go hunting something down.

Dimitri Van Kampen, happened to have pineapple on hand one fateful day a few years ago.

“I was homebrewing, and I had all these Cascade hops, but I wanted to do something other than just a pale ale. I’d just had breakfast, and there was some pineapple around, so I thought ‘why not?’ ” Van Kampen recalled recently.

Today, that happy but coincidental marriage has turned into the first offering of Spearhead Brewing, the company co-founded by Van Kampen last year. But it didn’t happen without plenty of fine-tuning.

“We played around with what point in the process we should add the pineapple, we played around with how much, we played around with what form it should be in,” said Van Kampen. “We figured out pretty quickly that chunks of pineapple, or pineapple pulp, weren’t any good, because they just clogged up all the equipment. Now we use organic pineapple juice.”

That “we,” includes Spearhead brewmaster Tom Schmidt, who spent several decades plying his trade at Labatt. While Van Kampen was a little concerned at first whether someone who’d spent their career cranking out industrial lager would be able to make the leap into the creative world of craft brewing, he now considers Schmidt one of Spearhead’s biggest advantages. Schmidt oversees Spearhead’s brewing, which is being done under license at Etobicoke’s Cool Brewing (a stand-alone Spearhead brewery is in the long-term plans).

“His brewing knowledge is just incredible. He can take one sip of a beer and tell you what’s wrong with it from a technical point of view. There are a lot of craft brewers who are very passionate and creative, but not a lot of them have Tom’s technical expertise. We’re really fortunate,” says Van Kampen.

Schmidt’s brewing skills are in ample evidence in the Hawaiian Pale Ale. The pineapple character shows up as an accent, rather than a dominant flavour. It complements the bold, citrusy character of this bitter, golden-hued brew. That citrusy flavour and aroma comes mostly from the generous doses of American hops used by Schmidt. The pineapple, meanwhile, lends a fruity note to the nose of what could otherwise easily be mistaken for an IPA.

“I didn’t want us to make a fruit beer. I wanted to make a beer with fruit in it, if that makes any sense,” said Van Kampen.

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